OPM's seven 'top priorities' includes 'diversity' but not 'security.'

The day before the Office of Personnel Management first announced a massive data breach of personal information, now former OPM director Katherine Archuleta's attention was focused elsewhere. Archuleta published a blog post on June 3 entitled "Celebrating Every Member of Our Federal Family" in recognition of "LGBT Pride Month." The White House reposted Archuleta's article the same day.

In her post, Archuleta announced the release of an updated guide called "Addressing Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Discrimination in Federal Civilian Employment: A Guide to Employment Rights, Protections, and Responsibilities."

As we celebrate LGBT Pride Month, I want to proudly reinforce my continued commitment to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender members of our federal family, and recognize the incredible contributions this community has made in service to the American people...

On the OPM website, the agency has seven "top priorities" listed. The first two are "Honoring the Workforce" and "Build a More Diverse and Engaged Workforce". Number four on the list is "IT Improvement" to "streamline and update IT systems" and number five is "Background Investigations" to "lead efforts to strengthen the background investigations program across government." The priorities list does not include any direct references to "security."

When reporters questioned White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest on June 17 about calls for Archuleta's resignation over the data breach, Earnest said that Archuleta had made cyber security a priority and that the president had "confidence" in her to do the job:

[T]his is an issue that they’ve been working on for some time; that Director Archuleta, in one of her first priorities that she identified after taking that job, was to upgrade the OPM computer network, particularly their cyber defenses. And this is obviously an ongoing process, and the President does have confidence that she is the right person for the job...

OPM, under the leadership of Director Archuleta, recognizes that this does need to be a priority and that there is significant and important work that needs to be done to make sure that they’re fulfilling their responsibility to protect the data of federal workers...

[A] number of senior White House officials have been in touch with the senior leadership at OPM.

As further information came to light that the OPM breach was far worse than first revealed, Director Archuleta initially said she had no intention of resigning (via Federal Times):

"When I took office in late 2013, one of my priorities was to upgrade OPM's antiquated legacy systems," she said during a call with reporters Thursday. "It is because of the efforts of OPM and its staff that we've been able to identify the breaches."

How many minority students = a critical mass?

Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin is the affirmative action case that won’t go away. It’s been to the Supreme Court once and may return. It is a case that could well turn on a failure to define terms—“critical mass” being the critical term.

It's an article of faith among bien pensant liberals that all institutions in society must achieve perfect gender parity. Consider, for example, the left’s outrage at the dearth of women employed at Google and other tech firms (despite the fact that far fewer women study computer science than men) or its efforts to lower physical standards so that more women become firefighters (despite the fact that most people in burning buildings would rather their lives be saved than politically correct mandates be met).

Coming to Maryland.

The state agency in charge of Maryland's beleaguered Obamacare Marketplace, the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange (MHBE), is looking to establish a standing advisory committee to provide the board of the MHBE advice and input on a "broad range of policy issues." The MHBE sent out a letter to "stakeholders" this week who might have an interest in serving on the committee.

News from academia! “President Salovey and I,” writes Yale’s provost, “have invited a distinguished group of academic leaders to a diversity summit at Yale on February 11-12, 2014. Their visit will include a series of discussions with faculty and administrators about the challenges of diversifying our faculty.” Praise the Lord—at last!

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is scheduled to deliver a keynote address at the "Diversity in Cyber Security Conference" tomorrow in Washington, D.C., a press release from the organization hosting the event announced in a press release. The group Women in International Security is hosting the event.

The Scrapbook resolutely refuses to take the Kennedy Center Honors seriously, and this year’s carefully balanced, politically vetted selection of lifetime achievers in the performing arts​—​Dustin Hoffman, Led Zeppelin, Buddy Guy, Natalia Makarova, David Letterman​—​prompts us to change our mind not one whit.

The Arkansas Democratic party is denying presidential candidate John Wolfe the delegates he earned in the state's primary because Wolfe's selected delegates fail to meet the party's standards for diversity.

Our obsession with diversity has produced a governing class of monolithic sameness.

President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, the current U.S. solicitor general and former Harvard Law School dean Elena Kagan, is being touted as a “diversity” choice because she is a woman, while there are currently just two women on the Court in a country in which women make up more than half the population.

A misguided policy.

Pressing for a world without nuclear weapons, the State Department has been flacking the president’s upcoming Nuclear Security Summit, scheduled for April 12–13: "President Obama has invited over 40 nations to participate, representing a diverse set of regions and various levels of nuclear materials, energy, and expertise."

Does "a diverse set of regions" mean that affirmative action has become part of arms control? Does "various levels of expertise" mean there will be representatives with little expertise as well as great expertise? Is the State Department being run by diplomats or clowns?